A New Beginning
by LauraPorto
Summary: After John notices an old scar on Sherlock's left wrist, Sherlock leaves and recalls an encounter between himself and Mycroft that took place in a hospital in early 2005 and sparked an important change in his life.


It has been four days since their last case, and whilst John is relishing the break from certain danger and the possibility of death, he can tell that Sherlock is going out of his mind: he has been perched on his armchair like a hungry bird on a telephone wire, stooped over with his knees up against his chest, for eight hours. He has not moved or said a word during that time and barely blinks. The rise and fall of his chest is shallow. He once said about his body that "the rest is transport" and at this moment it cold not be more true – he is thinking, and it is almost like the rest of his body shuts down to basic functionality in order to devote more energy to the firing of neurons in that miraculous grey matter of his.

John, reclining more comfortably in his chair opposite his flat-mate, is typing up a blog, but his thoughts are focused on his friend; he's having trouble concentrating. He glances up from his laptop and eyes Sherlock cautiously; the other man is staring with glazed eyes into the corner of the room at nothing in particular, much as cats do. John cannot tell what Sherlock is thinking but he is visibly tense, his jaw clenched. He scratches at an ugly, grizzled scar on his left wrist that John has not noticed before. John's brow furrows.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock whips his head round and glares intently at John for a moment before spitting: "What? Can you not tell that I'm thinking, John? I need a case, I need a _case_!" It's been four days; the monotony of working a checkout at the Sainsbury's on the corner would be preferable to this suffocating boredom. Bored, bored, I'm so _bored_, John!"

John purses his lips as Sherlock leaps out of his chair, picking up the skull from the mantelpiece and beginning to pace around the room. His frustration radiates from him in waves as he turns the skull over in his hands, his eyes fixed on the floor. John coughs.

"Sherlock, how did you get that scar?"

Sherlock turns around sharply, the motion of his suit jacket disturbing motes of dust that catch the late afternoon light. "What scar?"

"The one on your wrist. You've never mentioned it before. Looks like a stab wound."

John's question is returned with frosty silence. Sherlock launches the skull onto his empty armchair where it lands with a soft 'thump' and settles, with a blank grin, in the corner of it. More agitated now, Sherlock grabs his coat from where it has been unceremoniously dumped on a dusty pile of books and shrugs it on pointedly.

"I'm going out, I need to think. Don't wait up." He is tense, his shoulders hunched, his jugular vein pounding beneath his pale skin. His mind is elsewhere as he strides down the stairs. The slam of the door reverberates through the house. John winces.

* * *

"Sherlock."

The calm yet demanding tone of Mycroft Holmes as he muttered his brother's name, clipped by a lifetime spent in public schools and surrounded by those who had also attended them, betrayed in the older Holmes something that he would one day – though presently unknown to himself – betray to John Watson: he was concerned, gravely concerned, about his younger and only brother.

"Sherlock," he repeated, more urgently now. He had been sitting on an uncomfortable plastic-coated chair adjacent to his brother's hospital bed for the past half an hour where the other man, deathly pale from loss of blood, lay; he looked swamped by the stiff, clinical sheets surrounding him, quiet and seemingly unconscious; without his usual larger than life personality to take up the room he looked small despite his stature.

"Sherlock, I know both that you are awake and that you heard me come in, so cease this insufferable nonsense and talk to me. Say something, you child!" With the last syllable his voice hitched and he fiercely tapped his umbrella onto the grey linoleum floor. "I would appreciate your cooperation. If you insist on playing this game, continuing to associate with the criminal underworld – a world, I might add, of which you know nothing – then you must allow me to _help _you. I can help you, you fool. But you must also help yourself. That begins by coming up with an explanation for this mess – if Mummy finds out what you've really been doing it would be the death of her."

It was early in 2005. Sherlock was twenty-four and in the three years since he graduated from Oxford, he had not done anything of repute with his life; it was expected by their parents that he would take up a 'proper' job, settle down and become an adult. High time to 'give up childish things'. Sherlock's drug habit wasn't even a family secret – it remained between the two brothers, not spoken of, like a dead spider curled up in a dark corner of a room that nobody had noticed or bothered to sweep up. Mycroft knew that his brother was searching, desperately, for some meaning in his life; an alleviation of the never-ending, soul-crushing boredom that he had always felt and continued to feel.

In their childhood it was told of by dissected frogs, piles of annotated Ancient Greek philosophy and long disappearances during the summer holidays that his parents only spoke of through vacant stares and slammed doors. Mycroft had tried to follow Sherlock through the miles of stark grassland in their parents' Scottish estate, but he had never been able to keep up.

Now, the same tedium was represented by 4am calls from Brixton phone boxes, debts with hollow-eyed junkies that Mycroft silently paid off and bullet holes in the walls of the Kensington flat that their parents' extensive wealth provided for Sherlock. The Aristotle remained, but little else did.

Mycroft could tell that something was changing in his brother's life; hypodermic needle holes accompanied by characteristic bruises in the crooks of Sherlock's arms had been replaced by broken bones and deep cuts courtesy of small-time mob bosses – and now this, infinitely more serious and betraying of an intelligent young man infinitely out of his depth. This was a far more serious injury than those that had preceded it: a stab wound from a serrated blade that had nicked the radial artery in Sherlock's left wrist and caused nerve damage that would need surgery to correct.

"If you're serious about this… detecting, Sherlock, it can't carry on like this. You're going to get yourself – "

Sherlock, eyes still closed, opened his mouth and wearily uttered, "I don't care if I die. It would be better than this, 'the thousand mortal shocks that flesh is heir to.' I am done, Mycroft. I feel nothing except the buzz of the chase. If I cannot continue, my life has no point."

"You should care, Sherlock. As I was about to say, before you kindly interrupted with your soliloquizing, I can put you in contact with the… proper people, if you believe this is your calling, but you cannot continue unchecked. It is dangerous, for one, and the police will not tolerate an amateur like you contaminating their crime scenes. I know someone at Scotland Yard who would welcome your aid: one Lestrade, Detective Inspector Lestrade."

Sherlock blinked his eyes open and slowly looked over to Mycroft, felinely, his attention raised. He watched his brother with the interest of a cat eyeing a bird through a window, tail twitching from side to side. "Go on."

"First, dear brother, you must agree to this surgery, for I doubt you want to spend the rest of your days without the feeling in your left hand. Stop the drug use. Visit Mummy, she misses you."

Sherlock tutted and muttered "sentiment" under his breath.

"You may feel that way, but regardless, these are my terms. Now, there is a world-class team of surgeons that I am paying an extortionate amount of money to fix you and keep quiet about it waiting for my word to begin prepping the operating theatre. Agree and we'll talk more about my proposition."

Shifting uncomfortably in his hospital gown, sitting up now and toying with the fresh bandage on his arm, Sherlock sighed and nodded in consent.

"Right, good." Mycroft got up stiffly from the chair, resting his weight on his umbrella and looking for a moment at his brother with something quite like love before walking out. Sherlock stared out of the hospital room window at the darkened London skyline, a faint smile playing on his lips.

* * *

Sherlock returned to the flat early the next morning, a bottle of John's favourite red wine tucked under his arm – a necessary but begrudged apology. As he laid it down silently on the kitchen table in between a stack of petri dishes and the microscope, he looked squarely at John – who was sipping from a mug of tea and reading _The Times_ – and said "old war wound", gesturing to his left wrist. A look of understanding passed between the two men and the matter was not spoken of again, the horrors of the battlefield known to both of them.


End file.
